A website that will improve communication between emergency management professionals in Australia and around the world, has been given the go-ahead with a $20,000 grant to Charles Sturt University to develop the project.

The CSU project, prepared by staff from the School of Public Health's Emergency Management degree, was awarded the grant by the Australian International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction (IDNDR) Coordination Committee.

The website, Australian Emergency Management Forum, which will link all providers of emergency management education and training and include contacts for emergency management organisations, will be up and running by the end of the year.

The key component will be an emergency management on-line forum, which will be the first of its kind in Australia. This will be open daily for discussion and include monthly forums with a "guest speaker", a researcher or expert from a particular field of emergency management.

Coordinator of CSU's emergency management program John Lunn, said one of the greatest benefits of the site will be its ability to make information from a variety of emergency management sources more easily accessible.

"This will be particularly beneficial in providing a focused site where case studies of events can be posted and we can be up to date with the world's best practice in how to handle situations, as they happen."

Ian Manock, a lecturer in emergency management at CSU and website coordinator, said the site is being designed based on a successful American model.

"The site will have a distinctively Australian focus to help with education and knowledge development in this country but due to the nature of the World Wide Web, it will also have international links providing access to the latest information and research from around the world."

Charles Sturt University is a recognised leader in emergency management training as the first institution to offer an undergraduate degree in emergency management by distance education in the world and the only university in Australia to offer a Masters program in the field.

This project follows an agreement signed in May between Emergency Management Australia (EMA) and CSU to foster collaborative research and education programs in emergency management for Australia and overseas.